One of the common tasks performed by maintenance crews of utility companies is to open in-ground service boxes (also called vaults). The maintenance crews gain access to electrical cables, telephone wires, cable television cables and natural gas pipes through these vaults. The vaults are typically covered by lids that are secured by hold-down bolts.
Today, maintenance crews out in the field open vault lids using customarily available tools. Such tools include a wrench socket and a socket wrench handle, as well as a crowbar, a claw hammer or even a screw driver. Maintenance workers typically arrive at a job site in a service truck, gather the customary tools from a tool box in the service truck. The workers search for a particular socket from among a set of sockets for turning different sizes of bolts and nuts. The workers then carry the tools to the vault lid in their pockets and hands. The amount of weight that a maintenance worker can carry is limited. Thus, maintenance crews do not typically carry an entire tool box to the vault lid.
Most of the lids of vaults for a particular utility company typically have the same size and type of hold-down bolts. For example, the hold-down bolts on the vault lids of a particular telephone company might mostly have ¾-inch hexagonal bolt heads. Over time, the ¾-inch wrench socket in the tool boxes of many service trucks will become lost, as maintenance workers leave the sockets at the vault, leave the sockets in their pockets or drop the sockets onto the ground or into the vault.
A maintenance worker first kneels down to unscrew the hold-down bolts with a socket wrench. After the maintenance worker removes the hold-down bolts, he typically bends over to the ground and pries open the vault lid with a crowbar, claw hammer or screw driver. Then, still bent over, he grabs the lid with his hands and pulls it up and open. As this conventional method of removing vault lids involves bending over, grabbing the edge of the lid and pulling, it often results in back injuries.
Thus, a method of opening vault lids is sought in which it is less likely that a maintenance crew will misplace a wrench socket. Moreover, a tool is sought that enables a maintenance crew to open a vault lid without bending over to grab the edge of the vault lid.